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 OPIE, AMELIA (1769–1853), English author, daughter of James Alderson, a physician in Norwich, and was born there on the 12th of November 1769. Miss Alderson had inherited radical principles and was an ardent admirer of Horne Tooke. She was intimate with the Kembles and with Mrs Siddons, with Godwin and Mary Wollstonecraft. In 1798 she married John Opie, the painter. The nine years of her married life were very happy, although her husband did not share her love of society. He encouraged her to write, and in 1801 she produced a novel entitled Father and Daughter, which showed genuine fancy and pathos. She published a volume of graceful verse in 1802; Adeline Mowbray followed in 1804, Simple Tales in 1806, Temper in 1812, Tales of Real Life in 1813, Valentine’s Eve in 1816, Tales of the Heart in 1818, and Madeline in 1822. At length, in 1825, through the influence of Joseph John Gurney, she joined the Society of Friends, and beyond a volume entitled Detraction Displayed, and contributions to periodicals, she wrote nothing more. The rest of her life was spent in travelling and in the exercise of charity. Mrs Opie retained her vivacity to the last, dying at Norwich on the 2nd of December 1853.

 OPIE, JOHN (1761–1807), English historical and portrait painter, was born at St Agnes near Truro in May 1761. He early showed a taste for drawing, besides having at the age of twelve mastered Euclid and opened an evening school for arithmetic and writing. Before long he won some local reputation by portrait-painting; and in 1780 he started for London, under the patronage of Dr Wolcot (Peter Pindar). Opie was introduced to the town as “The Cornish Wonder,” a self-taught genius. The world of fashion, ever eager for a new sensation, was attracted; the carriages of the wealthy blocked the street in which the painter resided, and for a time he reaped a rich harvest by his portraits. But soon the fickle tide of popularity flowed past him, and the painter was left neglected. He now applied himself with redoubled diligence to correcting the defects which marred his art, meriting the praise of his rival Northcote—“Other artists paint to live; Opie lives to paint.” At the same time he sought to supplement his early education by the study of Latin and French and of the best English classics, and to polish the rudeness of his provincial manners by mixing in cultivated and learned circles. In 1786 he exhibited his first important historical subject, the “Assassination of James I.,” and in the following year the “Murder of Rizzio,” a work whose merit was recognized by the artist’s immediate election as associate of the Academy, of which he became a full member in 1788. He was employed on five subjects for Boydell’s “Shakespeare Gallery”; and until his death, on the 9th of April 1807, his practice alternated between portraiture and historical work. His productions are distinguished by breadth of handling and a certain rude vigour, individuality and freshness. They are wanting in grace, elegance and poetic feeling. Opie is also favourably known as a writer on art by his Life of Reynolds in Wolcot’s edition of Pilkington, his Letter on the Cultivation of the Fine Arts in England, in which he advocated the formation of a national gallery, and his Lectures as professor of painting to the Royal Academy, which were published in 1809, with a memoir of the artist by his widow (see ).

OPINION (Lat. opinio, from opinari, to think), a term used loosely in ordinary speech for an idea or an explanation of facts which is regarded as being based on evidence which is good but not conclusive. In logic it is used as a translation of Gr. , which plays a prominent part in Greek philosophy as the opposite of knowledge ( or  ). The distinction is drawn by Parmenides, who contrasts the sphere of truth or knowledge with that of opinion, which deals with mere appearance, error, not-being. So Plato places between  and , as dealing with phenomena contrasted with non-being and being respectively. Thus Plato confines opinion to that which is subject to change. Aristotle, retaining the same idea, assigns to opinion (especially in the Ethics) the sphere of things contingent, i.e. the future: hence opinion deals with that which is probable. More generally he uses popular opinion—that which is generally held to be true —as the starting-point of an inquiry. In modern philosophy the term has been used for various conceptions all having much the same connotation. The absence of any universally acknowledged definition, especially such as would contrast “opinion” with “belief,” “faith” and the like, deprives it of any status as a philosophic term.

OPITZ VON BOBERFELD, MARTIN (1597–1639), German poet, was born at Bunzlau in Silesia on the 23rd of December 1597, the son of a prosperous citizen. He received his early education at the Gymnasium of his native town, of which his uncle was rector, and in 1617 attended the high school—“Schönaichianum”—at Beuthen, where he made a special study of French, Dutch and Italian poetry. In 1618 he entered the university of Frankfort-on-Oder as a student of literae humaniores, and in the same year published his first essay, Aristarchus, sive De contemptu linguae Teutonicae, a plea for the purification of the German language from foreign adulteration. In 1619 he went to Heidelberg, where he became the leader of the school of young poets which at that time made that university town remarkable. Visiting Leiden in the following year he sat at the feet of the famous Dutch lyric poet Daniel Heinsius (1580–1655), whose Lobgesang Jesu Christi and Lobgesang Bacchi he had already translated into alexandrines. After being for a short year (1622) professor of philosophy at the Gymnasium of Weissenburg (now Karlsburg) in Transylvania, he led a wandering life in the service of various territorial nobles. In 1624 he was appointed councillor to Duke George Rudolf of Liegnitz and Brieg in Silesia, and in 1625, as reward for a requiem poem composed on the death of Archduke Charles of Austria, was crowned laureate by the emperor Ferdinand II. who a few years later ennobled him under the title “von Boberfeld.” He was elected a member of the Fruchtbringende Gesellschaft in 1629, and in 1630 went to Paris, where he made the acquaintance of Hugo Grotius. He settled in 1635 at Danzig, where Ladislaus IV. of Poland made him his historiographer and secretary. Here he died of the plague on the 20th of August 1639.

Opitz was the head of the so-called First Silesian School of poets (see :Literature), and was during his life regarded as the greatest German poet. Although he would not to-day be considered a poetical genius, he may justly claim to have been the “father of German poetry” in respect at least of its form; his Buch von der deutschen Poeterey (1624) put an end to the hybridism that had until then prevailed, and established rules for the “purity” of language, style, verse and rhyme. Opitz’s own poems are in accordance with the rigorous rules which he laid down. They are mostly a formal and sober elaboration of carefully considered themes, and contain little beauty and less feeling. To this didactic and descriptive category belong his best poems, Trost-Gedichte in Widerwärtigkeit des Krieges (written 1621, but not published till 1633); Zlatna, oder von Ruhe des Gemüts (1622); Lob des Feldlebens (1623); Vielgut, oder vom wahren Glück (1629), and Vesuvius (1633). These contain some vivid poetical descriptions, but are in the main treatises in poetical form. In 1624 Opitz published a collected edition of his poetry under the title Acht Bücher deutscher Poematum (though, owing to a mistake on the part of the printer, there are only five books); his Dafne (1627), to which Heinrich Schütz composed the music, is the earliest German opera. Besides numerous translations, Opitz edited (1639) Das Annolied, a Middle High German poem of the end of the 11th century, and thus preserved it from oblivion.